Internet technologies have become rapidly widespread, and have therefore increasingly been adopted for purchase or placement of an order of an article.
In an article sales site called a shopping mall, an article purchase process can be performed through a screen of a terminal device. For example, a user checks an article to be purchased on the screen and specifies a button image of “application for purchase” displayed on the screen, so that the application for purchase is transmitted to a server.
On the other hand, a system for mediating purchase and sales between individuals, called an auction, has also been known. In an auction site, applicants for purchase input desired prices of a provided article through terminal devices, and an applicant for purchase offering the highest desired price among the applicants for purchase wins a bid for the article.
Further, a system for realizing a “reverse auction” shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,794,207 on a network has recently been known. This system uses a method performed by Priceline in the US (http://www.priceline.com), in which an applicant for purchase of an article (such as an airline ticket) offers a desired price, and a seller meeting a condition of the desired price accepts a bid.
With respect to such auction systems, the inventors of the present invention have filed a prior patent application focusing on a problem inherent in the joint purchase (Patent Document 1).
Patent Document 1: U.S. Pat. No. 5,794,207
Patent Document 2: JP 2001-155067 A